


Three's Company

by omphale23



Category: Twitch City
Genre: Multi, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-15
Updated: 2010-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-08 00:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphale23/pseuds/omphale23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hope was pretty sure that the spark had gone out of their relationship. Curtis was out on the couch watching television, which was what Curtis always did and Hope wasn't complaining, exactly, but it did seem like he wasn't all that interested in her unless she was carrying a box of Frooty O's or the new TV Week or, you know, walking through the kitchen with flames shooting from her hair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three's Company

**Author's Note:**

  * For [belmanoir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/belmanoir/gifts).



Hope was pretty sure that the spark had gone out of their relationship. Curtis was out on the couch watching television, which was what Curtis always did and Hope wasn't complaining, exactly, but it did seem like he wasn't all that interested in her unless she was carrying a box of Frooty O's or the new TV Week or, you know, walking through the kitchen with flames shooting from her hair.

She wouldn't put money on his noticing if she caught fire, though.

It had to be some sort of record. They'd only been sleeping together for a few weeks, and (between visiting Nathan and making the trek out to the suburbs to check on her dad and looking for jobs wherever there was a sign in the window and in a few places without) Hope had spent most of her time on the bus. If you added it together (not that she had done that this week while she watched Toronto roll past the window of the crosstown local), they'd probably only been dating for twenty-three hours or something. It was hardly enough to have a fight, let alone fall into the sort of disinterested roommates arrangement they were headed for.

This was probably what her father meant by _you'll come to no good, hanging out with those hippies and beatniks in the city_ or _a little adversity builds character so what are you whining about missy_, but Hope refused to give up, well, hope. Curtis would come around, he just needed a little nudge to get him to realize that they were stuck in a rut. And possibly another push to help him realize that being stuck in a rut was a bad thing; it wasn't like watching reruns or a Rex Reilly marathon or eating cheese sandwiches for two meals every day. And, if it came to it, a good hard shove from behind to get him to get up off the couch and actually _do_ something.

Hope started with the subtle option.

It turned out that arguing didn't work, because Curtis had some sort of obliviousness shield and he didn't even notice that she was picking a fight because he was too busy playing with the toaster. She had to count to twenty and say the alphabet backwards, seriously, because if she didn't she was going to beat him over the head with the toaster and then throw it out the window for good measure.

She had already tried fancy lingerie, which Curtis sort of pushed at and tried to untie and then, when that didn't work in the first ten seconds, he rolled over and fell asleep. She ended up sleeping in it, which meant she woke up in the middle of the night coughing feathers out of her nose and trying not to strangle in the silk cord holding it all together.

Lucky ended up with a very expensive chew toy, and Hope swore off wearing lace ever again.

As a last resort, Hope unplugged the television before she left for the bus on Tuesday morning. When she got home Curtis was staring at the screen with such a look of utter betrayed bewilderment that she didn't have the heart to tell him why she'd done it. She just handed him the remote, which she'd hidden in her purse on the way out, and went to unpack the groceries.

It was the groceries that gave her the best idea she'd managed so far, better than the whipped cream (it always got sticky long before she expected) or the handcuffs (they left chafe marks on her wrists, and the second time she tried them the key fell behind the bed and Curtis had to use a hacksaw to get her loose to crawl around and find it). It was the way she caught Newbie grinning at her when she bought the groceries that gave Hope ideas, ideas that didn't involve threatening sleepwear or repurposed food products or that weird catalog that kept showing up the third Friday of the month, wrapped in brown paper and with Nathan's name on it.

She liked Newbie, honestly she did, and for a moment as he cleared his throat and stacked the cans of organic, nutritionally balanced, real-salmon-flavored cat food in her basket it was like they were sharing a secret, hiding something from the people who were just buying cigarettes and skin mags and scratch off tickets. Hope and Newbie were better than all that, they knew what really mattered. They were the sort of people who bought the variety pack of condoms, just because it was important to have an assortment of shapes and colors.

Hope knew it was his embarrassed little cough that made her ask Newbie if he knew anybody looking for a place to live, but it was his smile that made her agree to take the job that had just opened up for a stock girl. Well, the smile and the fact that the bill came to thirty dollars. The job came with an employee discount, and that was the reason she gave to Curtis when he asked.

That she had suddenly remembered _nothing sparks a relationship like a threesome_ (one of the few things she'd learned from the girls in grade eleven that Hope ever found helpful; the others were _don't sit on the bleachers in November without rolling the uniform skirt back down_ and _the trigonometry teacher gives good grades to anyone who sits in the front and twirls her hair_), that Hope had decided to see if she could manage to get Curtis and Newbie away from the television long enough to make out on her quilt while she tried to wrap her mouth around both of them at the same time (it probably only worked in porn, but she had always gone out of her way to get the extra points for effort), or that she had been taking notes in that sex toy sales party when they talked about the importance of lube? These were things that Curtis didn't need to know. Yet.

By the time Hope got home, she'd convinced herself that Newbie just had something caught in his tonsils, but she hadn't stopped thinking about the importance of spontaneity and variety in a healthy sex life all afternoon. She wondered about what it would be like to kiss them in the hallway that night when Newbie arrived on their doorstep, box of perishables in hand. She didn't stop thinking of the possibilities when she helped Newbie pack up his clothes and walk them over.

She almost asked Newbie whether he'd be interested when they sat on the bed, but that didn't seem right, to start something when they hadn't even been in the apartment long enough for him to put away his coat.

Some things, it turned out, required more careful planning than others.

Hope didn't exactly get dressed up that night, but she also didn't exactly _not_ put on her favorite shirt and curl her hair and wear some of the perfume Nathan had given her for Hanukkah the year before. She didn't buy flowers or candy, but her hands shook as she lit the candles and every time she heard the murmur of Newbie's voice in the other room, or the hum of Curtis answering, she smiled.

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